OTTAWA — Transport Minister Denis Lebel says there are enough federal inspectors in place to maintain Canada’s strong aviation safety record, although his department says more than 100 inspector jobs have been vacant for years.

The government’s oversight plan for Canada’s civil aviation system includes a staff complement of 880 inspectors. These positions include both licensed pilot inspectors, charged with ensuring companies and pilots are capable of conducting safe flight operations; and technical inspectors, tasked with making sure the equipment and associated systems to support the operations are safe to use.

There are 136 vacancies or unfilled inspection positions, Transport Canada confirmed, saying the current vacancy level “has been consistent for several years due to the normal attrition rate.”

Despite these chronic vacancies, Lebel said “we have enough inspectors and resources to do our job,” pointing to a 25-per-cent decrease in aviation accidents in Canada in the last decade. “They are at the lowest in all time,” Lebel said this week in answer to a question from NDP transport critic Olivia Chow.

Lebel’s spokesman, Mike Winterburn, added that the number of aviation inspector positions hasn’t been cut and the department is trying to fill vacancies. “While we have enough inspectors working to maintain Canada’s strong aviation safety record, Transport Canada continues to regularly run recruitment processes across the country to fill vacancies for inspectors and other safety personnel,” he said.

However, the head of the union representing pilot inspectors says the chronic vacancies creates a heightened safety risk for Canadian air travellers.

“I used their own charts to look at how many people they planned for or say they needed,” Daniel Slunder, president of the Canadian Federal Pilots Association, said Friday after releasing his association’s own study of staffing. “You’re not doing all the work and you’re saying you’re short of people, but it’s OK. Well, I don’t see that as logical. It doesn’t sound truthful to me.”

According to his group’s study, 100 of 499 licensed pilot inspector positions are currently vacant. This includes a vacancy rate of 21 per cent (60 of 289) among front-line pilot inspection positions in different regions, and a vacancy rate of 19 per cent (40 of 210 positions) at Transport Canada’s headquarters in Ottawa.

Overall, aviation enforcement (30 per cent of positions are vacant) and aviation safety system (29 per cent are vacant) are the most short-handed operations at Transport Canada, the pilot inspector study concludes.

“I’m not sure what they’re doing to hire because I’m not seeing it,” said Slunder.

Martin Eley, director general of Transport Canada’s civil aviation branch, told parliamentarians earlier this week that the demographic reality of the workforce poses an additional challenge.

“(The) organization is 1,400 people altogether. With a natural turnover rate, it ends up giving you a significant number. In one area during the course of 12 months we recruited 36 people and we lost 37 so there is active recruitment going on. The baby boomers are part of that trend.

“We clearly need to staff the positions. It isn’t for a lack of trying,” Eley told members of the House of Commons public accounts committee.

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